Buying a camera

September 06, 2007

I am thinking of buying a new camera…perhaps a digital SLR. Used to do some photography with an old Nikon…. back when photos’ needed processing. Looking for advice on what to buy….not too expensive, but good enough to make some nice shots!

Journal Comments

dairygirl
over 10 years ago

I Bill, I have a range of diital cameras. from fujiefilm, Nikon to the olympus camera’s. I love the olympus, does not hurt the back pocket to much and get great quality photos.each to thier own with what they like to use, but I love the olymups, good luck

It depends what do you want your images for, what kind of photos or rather in what conditions. Digital cameras disadvantage is that the quality can not be comparable to traditional, especially long exposure/night photos. Nikon images at ISO 400 or higher then to be a bit noisy, but are not that bad as for instance Olympus. I say this from my experience and years of browsing web photogalleries. I have a Nikon D80 at the moment, previously owned Nikon D70, Olympus E-300, Canon 300D, Olympus E-10, and had a chance to take images with some other Olypus cameras, Minolta and Sony. Regarding noise probabaly Canon SLR are the best, ie give really clear images but… but… for me… out of focus areas (I am crazy about very shallow DOF) looked like “plastic”. Maybe it was a fault of lenses I used then (Sigma set). Now with good Nikon lenses (50mm F1.4, 105mm f 2.0) + excellent Sigma macro (150mm f2.8) I am really happy how the camera captures out of focus layers. So if you still have some Nikon lenses go on one of Nikon SLR. Notice that although D40 and D50 are cheaper and not that different to D70s and D80 if about features, they are not the best for avanced photographers who like changing settings very often. For instance manula exposure mode requires setting shutter speed and aperture. In D80 there are 2 command dial wheels while in D40 there is only one so changing settings require pressing buttons. So if you need to do that fast (for sport photos) then take more expensive camera. And read about what kind of lenses you can use with each Nikon digital SLR.

Hi Bill, I bought my first dSLR a few weeks back – a Nikon D80 which I’m really pleased with. As narabia says, it might make more sense to go for a Nikon with your current lenses. I’m not a beginner but I’m also not a pro, but the D80 seems perfect for my needs. Mine came with the AFS Nikkor 18-135mm 3.5-5.6 G ED lens (pretty highly rated on SLRgear.com) and I’ve been happy with the results so far.